The cocktail party Marvin Josephson was hosting inside his Beverly Hills mansion was a major pre-Oscar social event for ICM's roster of artists.
The previous Wednesday, Daenerys Entertainment had officially signed the contract for the Superman lead role of Clark Kent. Because the actor was an ICM client, Marvin Josephson had personally attended the signing ceremony and extended this party invitation to Simon as well.
The actor officially locked in for the Superman lead was Brad Pitt.
Simon had taken notice of Pitt two years earlier.
In his memory Brad Pitt had actually been interested in Warner Bros' 2006 reboot Superman Returns, but by then Pitt's fame had grown too large and Warner had been forced to pass.
The current Brad Pitt was twenty-nine years old and had debuted in the mid-eighties. Unlike Tom Cruise, who was only one year older and whose career had been smooth sailing, Pitt had spent his time since debut stuck in the lower ranks, taking every kind of bit part imaginable.
His most notable recent role had been the male eye-candy part in Thelma & Louise that had originally belonged to him, and that had only happened because Simon had deliberately arranged it.
To pave the way for Pitt to play Superman, after Thelma & Louise he would next star in A River Runs Through It, a Daenerys Entertainment investment directed by Robert Redford himself. The film, adapted from an autobiographical novel, had been Pitt's breakout role in the original timeline.
According to the schedule A River Runs Through It would release at the end of the year and campaign for the following awards season.
Brad Pitt had signed the same kind of fifteen-year, five-film contract as Batman lead Adam Baldwin.
However, unlike Adam Baldwin's five-film package worth thirty million dollars total, Pitt's starting salary was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, with each of the following four films increasing by two million five hundred thousand dollars.
If the Superman series performed as expected, the total value of Brad Pitt's five-film deal would come to roughly twenty-five million dollars.
A twenty-five-million-dollar package was almost insignificant compared with the potential value of the Superman series. Yet for an actor at Pitt's current level, it was an opportunity so rare that people would fight tooth and nail for it.
Not only had Clark Kent been cast; the actor for Cyborg, Victor Stone, had also been finalized recently.
The role had gone to Will Smith, who in the past two years had transitioned from the rap world into Hollywood.
Will Smith had debuted as a rapper in 1985. Although he had won a Grammy for Best Rap Duo three years earlier, he was only mid-tier in the music industry. The album that earned him the Grammy had sold just five hundred thousand copies.
After becoming famous, excessive spending and tax evasion had caught up with him. Two years ago the IRS had hit him with a two-point-eight-million-dollar fine that bankrupted the rapper, forcing him to pivot to film and television for side income.
Then the ABC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which premiered in 1990, had allowed Smith to establish a solid foothold in the acting world.
Opportunities for Black actors to break through were far fewer in this era than they would be in the new century.
With the DC Movie Universe at its peak, the role of the Black superhero Cyborg had naturally drawn fierce competition from a large pool of Black performers, and Will Smith was no exception.
With Simon's push behind the scenes, Will Smith, who was genuinely a perfect fit for the character, had successfully secured the part.
The five-film contract was the same format, but because Cyborg's popularity would be far lower than Superman's or Batman's, and because Smith had only done one television series, he was not yet a major name. Therefore the total package was worth only twenty million dollars.
Five films, starting salary of two hundred thousand dollars, with each of the following four rising by a maximum of two million dollars.
Simon arrived at the Josephson cocktail party with Nicole Kidman a little after eight o'clock in the evening. The event had already been underway for some time.
Cocktail parties were deliberately relaxed affairs, and hosts rarely set strict start times, so the two of them were not considered late.
Besides.
Simon Westeros being late…
Well.
In present-day Hollywood that would sound like a joke.
When news of Simon's arrival spread, Marvin Josephson came out to greet him together with his daughter Nancy Josephson.
After several reorganizations in the eighties, Marvin Josephson had largely stepped away from day-to-day management of the talent agency and now served only as chairman and major shareholder.
Nancy Josephson was the successor Marvin had been grooming to take over ICM. She was already emerging as one of the agency's rising agents.
As a newcomer in this circle, Simon knew that in a few years Nancy Josephson would become co-president of ICM. One of her most famous clients would be Johnny Depp.
Johnny Depp had shot to fame two years earlier with Edward Scissorhands and was now a young heartthrob with considerable name recognition in Hollywood. Depp had previously tried to land the Flash role, but Simon had felt his style simply did not match Barry Allen and had passed on him.
The Academy Awards were next Monday, so many of ICM's top stars had converged on Los Angeles just like Nicole Kidman.
As a result, the mansion perched on a Beverly Hills hilltop and covering more than one acre had guests scattered everywhere, inside the villa, on the lawns, and across the backyard.
Mel Gibson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Denzel Washington, Susan Sarandon, Demi Moore, Julia Roberts, Jodie Foster, and a large group of other ICM headliners and mid-tier artists filled the party, along with plenty of studio executives.
Many Hollywood film projects were quietly locked in at exactly these kinds of social gatherings.
Marvin Josephson had gone to great lengths to invite Simon, and it was certainly not just to build personal rapport.
After exchanging greetings with a few familiar faces like Mel Gibson, Marvin led Simon to a corner of the backyard lawn where Arnold Schwarzenegger and Columbia Pictures CEO Peter Guber were already standing.
"Simon, Amy said you weren't interested in the Last Action Hero script. I think you should hear Arnold's own thoughts on it. This is going to be a blockbuster on the level of Terminator 2."
After last year's Terminator 2, Arnold Schwarzenegger's popularity had returned to its peak. The action star's next project had naturally become a focal point for the entire industry.
Word had recently spread that Schwarzenegger was developing an original script titled Last Action Hero, and the screenplay had quickly made the rounds in Hollywood.
Simon did not need to read the script. The title alone told him this was the biggest misstep Schwarzenegger would take in the nineties.
Last Action Hero told the story of a young boy obsessed with a screen action hero who magically receives a ticket that lets him cross between the movie world and reality, then embarks on adventures with his idol. Arnold would play the action hero named Jack Slater.
In his memory Last Action Hero had cost eighty-five million dollars to produce.
Upon release it had earned just over fifty million dollars in North America. The massive loss had forced Sony to pay another expensive tuition fee, and the film had nearly wrecked Schwarzenegger's career.
Daenerys Entertainment had flatly rejected the project when ICM began shopping it to the major studios.
Judging by the current situation, Sony-controlled Columbia Pictures was clearly about to take it on just as in the original timeline.
However, after the back-to-back failures of last year's The Last Eagle and Hook, Sony had grown noticeably more cautious. Peter Guber was still trying to pull Daenerys Entertainment in to turn it into a co-production.
Simon had zero intention of touching Last Action Hero, nor would he kindly warn Sony against it.
A box-office disaster like Last Action Hero opening would leave a huge vacant slice of the market in its release window. That kind of shift could only benefit Daenerys Entertainment.
Simon patiently listened while Arnold Schwarzenegger explained his vision for the project, exchanged a few words with Peter Guber, then verbally said he would think it over. In reality he planned to have Amy deliver a fresh rejection in a few days.
When Simon walked away, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Peter Guber, screenwriter Zak Penn, and the others looked visibly disappointed.
After spending enough time in this circle, one glance at Westeros's non-committal attitude was enough for everyone to understand that Daenerys Entertainment would definitely not be joining the project.
Yet Simon's cool response did nothing to dampen their determination to make the movie.
Even though Daenerys Entertainment's projects had dominated the upper reaches of the box-office chart last year, plenty of successful films had still come from other studios.
Marvin Josephson showed no trace of disappointment that Simon had declined Last Action Hero. He continued to escort him warmly to another tall male star.
This was also an ICM client, Liam Neeson.
While shooting Jurassic Park, Spielberg had already begun searching for the lead of Schindler's List.
Because of the special significance behind Schindler's List, many major Hollywood names such as Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, and Warren Beatty had expressed willingness to take pay cuts to star.
Still, Simon preferred the original choice of Liam Neeson.
Liam Neeson was already forty this year. He had debuted in the eighties and after ten years in Hollywood remained only a mid-tier actor.
Thinking of how Neeson's career would develop later, it had to be said that compared with actresses, Hollywood male stars basically had no shelf-life and enjoyed far more advantages.
In private discussions Spielberg felt Schindler should be a man like Steve Ross, so he wanted to find an actor in the same vein.
Since he hoped Neeson would get the part, Simon had privately given him guidance, instructing ICM and Neeson to find some video references related to Ross.
Unlike Jurassic Park, this project was one where Simon would only offer suggestions. The final decision rested entirely with Spielberg.
In his memory Schindler's List had actually performed decently at the box office, but no matter whether Spielberg ultimately chose Neeson or not, Simon did not particularly care.
What he valued about the project was never the profit. It was the attitude it would signal to Hollywood's Jewish community.
To the outside world, because his background remained unclear, Simon's ethnicity was a frequent topic of discussion.
Most media outlets generally agreed that whether based on the surname Westeros had replaced or on his own appearance, he should be standard Anglo-Saxon, in other words a classic American WASP.
Although some people hoped Simon was Jewish, including the Jewish community in Hollywood which hoped even more strongly, and a few had even sounded him out about converting, the general consensus remained the same.
In public perception the American Jewish community seemed especially powerful and glamorous, but the reality was different.
Anyone who looked deeper into American society would quickly discover that many Jews, whether prominent politicians or wealthy businessmen, carried a deep-seated sense of inferiority when facing WASPs.
Many of America's most exclusive clubs still refused Jewish membership to this day.
At the same time, once Jews achieved success they often tried every means possible to squeeze into WASP circles.
This was why racial issues in America remained so sensitive.
The root cause was the pervasive, deeply ingrained racial discrimination that existed everywhere, and that discrimination was by no means limited to White versus Black. Even among White people there were clear lines drawn between "rednecks" and "White trash."
Simon naturally had no intention of declaring himself Jewish or converting simply to curry favor with Hollywood's Jewish community.
However, as his own power in Hollywood continued to grow, supporting the production of Schindler's List to express a certain attitude was actually very necessary.
He had just finished chatting with Liam Neeson when Bruce Willis and Demi Moore came over to greet him.
The couple's current situation could fairly be described as on the decline.
Bruce Willis had suffered back-to-back box-office flops with The Last Eagle and The Last Boy Scout, leaving Hollywood wondering whether the star who had risen on Die Hard still possessed leading-man potential.
After Ghost, Demi Moore had consolidated her A-list status last year with A Few Good Men.
However, once she became famous the actress had seemed overly eager to cash in. Right after finishing A Few Good Men she had immediately taken two more films back-to-back.
One was Paramount's The Butcher's Wife, released last October on a twenty-million-dollar budget and earning just over nine million dollars domestically.
The other fared even worse. Columbia's 24 Hours in a Haunted House, budgeted at forty million dollars and co-starring Ghostbusters' Dan Aykroyd, had tried to replicate the success of Ghostbusters and Ghost.
Instead the film had opened on Valentine's Day this year with a first-weekend gross of only three point two six million dollars, lasted two weeks in theaters, and scraped together barely six million dollars total.
Logically, Demi Moore's star power, along with that of her male co-star, should never have been relegated to the October and February dumping-ground slots.
The fact that both films had been buried in graveyard dates was enough to show that the studios themselves had very little faith in the finished quality of either project.
After two consecutive starring vehicles failed at the box office, even though the goodwill accumulated from Ghost and A Few Good Men had not yet faded, Hollywood studios were already close to labeling the actress as box-office poison.
Everyone could see that while Demi Moore's performance in Ghost had been solid, the success of A Few Good Men had relied far more on Robert De Niro and Tom Hanks carrying the picture.
Moreover, both Ghost and A Few Good Men had stood behind them the shadow of a certain young man.
When all the pieces were put together, Demi Moore's box-office pull looked even more questionable.
Six years after Simon's rebirth, Hollywood had already changed beyond recognition.
The blockbuster era had arrived ahead of schedule. Massive spectacles, huge productions, heavy effects, and major IP projects would gradually replace individual star power. After two straight flops, the road to recovery for this couple would not be easy.
"Simon, I spoke with Ms. Fache on the phone yesterday about this year's Oscar dress. I'm truly sorry about the Van Cleef & Arpels endorsement matter last time. I already fired my publicist. She felt the brand's positioning didn't quite match my image. But if the newly acquired CK at Melisandre needs any help from me, I'll do everything I can."
When Van Cleef & Arpels had been selecting its spokesperson last year, Sophia's first choice had been Demi Moore. The two sides had even made contact, only for Demi to choose Cartier, Van Cleef's direct rival, instead.
"It's fine. Besides, I don't get too involved in Melisandre's affairs."
Simon shook his head as he spoke.
He had never held overly high expectations of women, so the earlier incident had not left any strong impression.
Moreover, the current spokesperson for Van Cleef & Arpels was standing right beside him.
Facts had already proven that whether in looks or temperament, Nicole Kidman was far better suited to endorse a jewelry brand than Demi Moore.
Demi Moore could not help glancing at Nicole. She clearly wanted to say more but ultimately held back. After exchanging a few meaningless pleasantries she walked away with Willis.
Although Simon had sensed Demi Moore's flattery and regret during their conversation, along with certain hints she had made while her husband was not paying attention, he had no intention of wasting any more attention on her. This actress had probably used up every ounce of her talent in a single film called Ghost.
After circulating among the one or two hundred guests for roughly an hour, the time passed nine-thirty. Simon left the backyard lawn and headed through the villa to exit the party.
Inside the villa hall, however, Simon encountered a figure that caught him somewhat by surprise.